Deal or No Deal Once again the President called off the military action for a deal that is oh so close to signing but not signed. Once again the markets recover and oil prices are somewhat reduced. And once again, the Iranian regime flaunts the world with perhaps some inside who want to cave to America and others who want to keep fighting and will never give in. Meanwhile the fate of this presidency and perhaps the next rides on the outcome of the conflict. The president must get the nuclear material, get the strait and end the basic conflict by eroding the missiles and support for terror. Getting the nuclear material but letting Hezbollah control Lebanon is not a win and is just spin. Iran is a thousand miles from Israel and has no border or land conflict — its non nuclear actions supporting terrorists and destabilizing the other countries that region is the core How likely is it Iran is really going to give up all its nuclear and territorial control through proxies? Does not seem likely without finishing the military job but at this point all we can do is wait and see what the president delivers from an evil regime that cannot be trusted.

FISA 702 So the Democrats blocked temporary extension of FISA 702 which was last renewed with reforms 2 years ago under Biden. There were past abuses of this statute especially against the president when it was misused by the FBI. Safeguards were put in place then and no new issues have surfaced since then. Congress is negotiating renewal and the responsible action would have been to put in a temporary extension until complete. This section allows the national security tapping and analysis of foreign origin communications — not extending it in the middle of Iran negotiations and a conflict in the Mideast is completely irresponsible. This is vital intelligence gathering at the moment and should anything happen during this blackout period it will be on the hands of those legislators who left town and left America unguarded for no reason.

Iran Revisited Iran today launched missiles at American bases in three countries including Jordan and the Gulf countries. They had a choice and they chose clearly to message to the United States that they are in charge here. That they control the Strait and the world economy and the Iranian people. This is after Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel and Iran operated to try to shield Hezbollah from its actions, and that seemed to work for them. Then they thought they could do the same directly against the United States and they are now pushing the president to the limit with bellicose statements and missile firings to boot. First, they fired 40 missiles at Israel and after Israel responded they stopped. But against the US they are continuing the battle and so testing the US, putting it in a reverse economic squeeze over oil prices. The president has to decide now — stick with primarily the blockade that is a slow burn keeping oil high, continue to believe there is a deal to be made and ignore the Iranians’ actions, or go another round of kinetic action to re-establish a stronger position. At this juncture the Iranians have given up nothing, are acting to preserve their proxies and are firing missiles all over the place. One wonders what we are waiting for.

California Votin There are two key issues and they are related — 1) they allow mail in votes mailed thru Election Day and received a week later and 2) more importantly they allow ballot harvesting which is the mass canvassing and collection of ballots favorable to you. So this means that a late ballot harvesting operation can be deployed to game the system (ie telling Dems in the last week that bass will be in but we need to squeeze Pratt out). Obviously Florida now is a model system and California vote counting is a model of how to sow doubt by taking weeks rather than hours to count votes. And ballot harvesting is banned in most states and should be banned everywhere as it promotes people sitting around tables pressured to vote certain ways as their ballots are collected by partisans. Add loose registration rules in states with a lot of non-citizens and you compound these problems. Mail in votes should be counted only if received by the time the polls close and ballot harvesting should be banned and those two reforms would return fairness. And of course in California proof of citizenship is essential as well to provide confidence in the count. But it’s the harvesting rules that likely are the most problematic.

Iran Muddle It’s unclear who Trump is negotiating with in Iran, but Iran in the last week has now done everything it can do to thumb its noses at the US by launching missiles and drones against Israel, Kuwait, and Bahrain in t in addition to firing on US and other ships. As to Lebanon the deal was that Israel would not hit terrorists in Beirut if Hezbollah would stop firing rockets at Israel. Hez rejected the cease fire and so the dominoes started here with Hezbollah not willing to stop firing on Israel. So the story is that Hezbollah refuses to yield to Israel and the Lebanese government to stop firing at Israel and they, not Israel should be getting the heat for continuing the barrage. And what exactly did Kuwait and Bahrain do to suddenly be targeted by Iran? What aggressive action did they take? None. Iran appears to be in control of the proxies, the Strait and has the president trying to keep a ceasefire in place that works only to restrain retaliation against a regime that so far has not given any real indication it is willing to do anything but stall for time.

Carville’s logic Carville says it’s ok to support Graham Platner because Churchill worked with Stalin, who was a really bad guy. Wow. I don’t think Churchill would have voted for Stalin though. Nor is Susan Collins exactly Hitler. And this abject demonization of people like her is way over the top — she has more votes with Democrats than any other Republican. You may not fully agree with her or want a Democrat but she has a long career and is the state’s longest serving member of Congress because her politics has been reaffirmed by the voters of Maine for almost 30 years. There may be a lot of reasons to vote for someone or not but if you have compare your candidate to Stalin, that might not be someone worth endorsing.

Mideast Results Seems like democrats and now even a few Republicans are looking to score political points by voting to pull everything out of Iran. Who are they hoping to score those points with? Iran’s fav/unfav is 12/65 with the US voting public or a net score of -53 Hamas is 10/59 or net of -49. Chuck Schumer is at 26/39 or a net of negative 14. So who exactly are these politicians think they are courting by passing resolutions that help Iran, with Iran being the single most hated force in the world? And those evil forces and these votes will be on record long after this president leaves office and Iran and Hamas, unless they are truly set back here and now, are dedicated to regional and global instability and terrorism and will resume those activities with the support of these votes.

Gerrymandering Pickle The Supreme Court in trying to get out of the business of setting district lines has kicked off a storm of partisanship that is setting back the whole electoral system. First the Democrats did not start this round of gerrymandering but they did start the process over the last decade basically using non profits to fight for heavily tilted Democratic maps in blue states. The northeast (north of ny) has no Republican representatives at all. Obama and Holder ran this effort to tilt the maps to the Democrats and they were successful. In NY where reps got 44per cent of the presidential vote they are 26 per cent of the house seats and the legislature is trying to get that to zero if they can. Obviously the reps fired back in Texas and the Dems retaliated in Ca. So ultimately unless the court reconsiders its ruling we will eventually just be in winner take all congressional seats in each and every state. The Court’s experiment in this case of throwing it back to the states and letting the politicians sort it out is unfortunately not going to work out to produce balanced representation roughly proportional to the voter mix in each state. Non partisan redistricting should produce something close to a balance and partisanship itself will find no limits, producing even fewer swing districts and an even more partisan Congress.

Iranian Logic Hezbollah opened fire with scores of rockets and drones on Northern Israel making it uninhabitable. Israel is responding to the Hezbollah attacks which Hezbollah could stop and ask for a ceasefire at virtually anytime but instead continues to fire at Israel with escalating attacks and more sophisticated drones sent against civilians at night. And Iran has been firing on ships in the Strait and at Kuwait and elsewhere. And they are walking away over Lebanon? More incredible double talk from the world’s most evil regime.

Defiant Rants The Supreme Leader has issued defiant rants against the United States. Now is the time for the President to act in no uncertain terms to decimate the remaining military assets, leadership and key infrastructure to secure a real peace in the region. Prolonging this only prolongs the global turmoil caused by a regime that declares the United States its enemy as part of a religious war it is waging. And it has attacked not only Israel but almost all the neighboring countries as well. Just as a reminder Iran is over 1000 miles away from Israel and has no common borders, territorial disputes or refugees. It has simply declared it and the United States as sworn enemies it intends to destroy one way or another. And the regime gunned down untold thousands of its own citizens and execute people daily for protesting while shutting down the internet and controlling all communications. This regime has confounded presidents since 1979 and was all but legitimized by Obama who shipped them pallets of cash. Now is the time to finish the job and take out the biggest source of terror and instability in the world and reopen and control the Strait.

Meticulously researched article from a federal judge on the NYT failure to test the credibility of the Hamas-related sources or report on the systems and laws in place to police the incarceration of prisoners. Of course, anyone can find that Hamas record that on October 7th they took 255 prisoners (imprisoned for no reason other than they were thought to be Jewish), and returned 168 in various states of trauma while 87 or 34 per cent were returned dead, often tortured and then murdered. This included 8 US citizens taken prisoner. 50 per cent of those were returned murdered and 50 per cent alive.

New from me in @TheFP: A Miscarriage of Journalism at ‘The New York Times’ thefp.com/p/the-new-york-tim…

Serious Negotiations Now we are told there are “serious negotiations” underway with Iran, with the same folks who got a cease fire by promising to open up the Strait of Hormuz only they closed it down instead and attacked US warships and the UAE. They didn’t attack Israel because they know what happens if they do that — and it’s not more negotiations.

Iran Resolution With just about every senator having agreed Iran should never have a nuclear weapon, how puzzling it is that nearly half the senate would vote to end all military operations against Iran at a crucial moment while Iran violates international law by controlling the Strait of Hormuz and continues to execute its own people for protests while banning the internet so they cannot communicate with the rest of the world. Imagine if the Senate could actually pass such a resolution and imagine it would be binding. Such a resolution would immediately clear the path for Iran to have a nuclear weapon; would imperil all of the neighboring nations including the UAE. All progress in the region would come to a halt as terrorist proxies would be emboldened. It would be catastrophic and yet rather than back a resolution that supports America against Iran but say adds more Congressional oversight, the Dems instead push for a resolution that would be an immediate and unconditional surrender to Iran and its proxies. This is a direct undermining of our country and plays into the hands of the Iranians.

A lot happening On Iran the president has to weigh keeping the blockade, authorizing a fresh wave of strikes, or focusing on reopening the Strait by force. Negotiations have gone nowhere and Iran never kept the promise it made to open the Strait in exchange for a cease fire. It seems the slow blockade approach keeps oil higher for longer while the other two measures are riskier but more likely to yield faster results. I’d bet on one of them soon over just the blockade. Meanwhile both the US and Israel eliminated some big time terrorists including a top ISIS figure in Africa and a top Oct 7th planner/Hamas leader. And the NYT continues to immolate itself with defending its errant opinion column in the face of a 300 page report on the wanton and widespread sexual violence on Oct 7th. This time the din is not dying down and I think the best days of the NYT are clearly behind it. The turn it has taken to platform Hassan Piker, Graham Platner and Tucker Carlson are part of a rabbit hole it has gone down from which it may never recover.

The Iran Dare After a relentless pounding and regime change in Iran, the new regime continues to ban the Internet for its people, execute and threaten them, threaten neighbors like the UAE with missiles and drones, attack US ships, keep the Strait closed and so the time they were given for reflection appears to be coming to an end. In the meantime the US has added to its forces and the new regime is once again exposed. No doubt they have taken some steps to rearm and plan counter attacks but they are also more vulnerable than ever. The president may decide to just keep the blockade going, especially until after his trip to China. But the Iranian dare is getting more visible each day and the world seems to have decided there will be no further response to the new regime in Iran’s positions and claim on the Strait as Europe has retreated into its shell rather than confront Iran. One way or another though it’s more likely than not that the president will reaffirm his wider goals in the presence of a defiant regime and there will be another round of “kinetic” actions. There is no reason to leave the regime in place if it is not willing to give up its expansionist military goals. It is unlikely that temporary increases in oil prices and the threat of midterms six months away is going to stop the president from pushing this to the next level despite his having given the new regime opportunity — but his strategy here remains his own and will be disclosed in due time — and that’s the way it should be.

Negotiations nearing end? They are torturing young people to get confessions and then hanging them. They have seized the Strait of Hormuz to paralyze the world oil market.They are sending missiles to civilian areas of countries like the UAE and even tried attacking our ships. And keeping the internet shut so their people cannot communicate. And we are negotiating with them? I am always open minded to see what happens but these don’t seem like promising negotiating partners.